


Surprises

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Angst, Birthdays, Dogs, Fluff, M/M, Swearing, puppy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 19:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8545603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: Guan Shan buys He Tian a puppy for this birthday.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Сюрпризы](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521255) by [WTF_Webtoon_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Webtoon_2017/pseuds/WTF_Webtoon_2017)



> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153061538384/surprises

He Tian did not like birthdays.

Guan Shan, as it happened, did.

This changed things between them. It made things difficult. But then, things were different between them most of the time. The tensions were unbearable. The fights were moreso. The sex after them was better. And yet.

Guan Shan could not say, with any certainty, that the coil in the base of his stomach disappeared after it all. He could not say, with any certainty, that he did not feel like He Tian was a fractured sheet of glass ready to shatter. He could not say that, after, the arguments, and the hoarse voices, and the waspish comments thrown about, thick with spite, that a wrongness did not cling and snake around them still after six years.

He looked at He Tian, sitting on the sofa, beer in his hand. The TV was on. He was watching something about American politics. He had a slack kind of expression, eyes soft but not warm. His mouth was in a line.

Guan Shan glanced at the laptop screen that sat on the dining table in front of him. He’d made He Tian buy a table when they’d had too many dinners on the sofa in front of the TV.

‘It’s not how civilised people _do_ things, He Tian.’

‘Civilised?’ He Tian had said. ‘Fuck that. Bit arrogant of you, isn’t it?’

And Guan Shan had stared at him and wanted to hit him because that’s how things _went_ in the early days. That’s how it was. And—and it wasn’t _bad_. Because it wasn’t new—it wasn’t different to how things had always been between them, bared words and fists ready for swinging.

So they bought the table. They bought the TV because the apartment, otherwise, was full of white noise and He Tian spent too long staring out the window and it unsettled Guan Shan. And when he wasn’t staring at what was _out there_ he was staring at Guan Shan like he could see what was _in him_.

 _You can’t,_ Guan Shan wanted to tell him. _People don’t work like that. I don’t work like that._ Except no one could ever really tell He Tian anything he didn’t want to hear, and Guan Shan thought that, probably, He Tian already knew how people worked. Knew too well. Which made the whole thing even worse.

They bought an extra set of sheets for the bed so they weren’t sleeping on a mattress when the first set were in the wash, sticky from sex. They bought a bookshelf that stayed empty for a while because neither of them really read. They bought boxes, instead, to put on the shelves full of photos and Guan Shan’s charcoal drawings and trinkets that his mother sent him because living with He Tian across the city was like he’d moved to France.

And so, slowly, the place became theirs. It became something that Guan Shan could see himself in. It became something that Guan Shan could see himself and He Tian in, twinned together, inextricably.

‘It’s all just stuff, though,’ He Tian had said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘You can’t live in an empty home, He Tian,’ Guan Shan had said. ‘It’s not…’

‘Normal?’

‘Not _healthy_.’

‘Yeah. Well. I’ve got a bad smoking habit and an unbearable ego, so I’m sure there are other things that are worse than not having an end table from Vanity fucking Fair.’

‘It’s not about having _things_ ,’ Guan Shan had said. And he couldn’t explain it. How could he explain what it was like to be able to make a home when, to him, he had had nothing. How could he explain it to someone like He Tian who had nothing, but had always been able to have everything?

He thought about it, now, scrolling through Amazon. Through wishlists that other people had made and through craft websites. He thought about it clicking on random adverts and reading ‘Top Ten Birthday Gifts For Your Significant Other’ in the _Beijing Tatler._

He looked at He Tian again, watching the screen with eyes that didn’t move. Condensation from the beer was slipping across the skin of his hand. He rubbed the back of his neck, cleared his throat, and then his eyes met Guan Shan’s.

Electric.

‘What?’ He Tian said.

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered, and looked back down at the screen. It seemed impossible that a look from him, a glance, could do that. Could catch him like he was stuck in headlights. But the headlights were eyes made of coal and a mouth that looked cruel and whispered things that were always too sweet. Made words get stuck in the back of his throat in surprise; how was it possible that a voice like that could say the things he did sometimes?

Guan Shan sighed. It was impossible.

He Tian didn’t want anything. He didn’t need anything.

‘I have you,’ he’d said, murmured into the slope of Guan Shan’s neck, a brush of air that made Guan Shan shudder. ‘What else am I supposed to need?’

_It’s not about need. You’re twenty-one. What twenty-one-year-old doesn’t want?_

He knew what He Tian would say: ‘But I want you. Isn’t that enough?’

And he couldn’t say it didn’t make him ache with the impossibility of being wanted. Of, almost, being needed. Him.

‘You’re being quiet.’

Guan Shan looked up. Still, He Tian was looking at him. Like he hadn’t looked away. Guan Shan hadn’t even felt himself being watched.

‘Reading the news.’

He Tian paused. ‘You never read the news.’

‘That’s a lie.’

He Tian gave him an amused look, arm thrown over the back of the sofa, torso turned towards him. ‘No, Guan Shan. It’s really not.’

‘I read the _news_.’

‘You read—I don’t even know what you read. But it’s not the news.’

Guan Shan bit his lip. ‘I could read it if I wanted to.’

He Tian had an eyebrow raised. Suddenly, he’d turned the TV off, the quiet buzz of the narrator’s voice switched off. Suddenly, he was on his feet, long legs striding beneath him, bare feet a silent press into the floorboards.

When He Tian moved like that Guan Shan felt like he couldn’t move. It was a lope. It was the movement of a man that was searching for something and would find it. No—it was the movement of something wilder than that, uninhibited.

_The minute you make him less than he is, he’ll have his jaws around your throat. And it’ll be no one’s fault but your own._

He Tian was standing behind him by the time Guan Shan felt himself breathe again, a warm press against his back, hard and solid. His fingers were scrolling across the laptop’s trackpad, eyes roaming the screen.

Guan Shan tried to stay still.

‘I was just—’

‘I told you I didn’t want anything,’ He Tian said. He sounded worn, which was better than what it could have been. ‘We’ve had this discussion.’

‘But I told you I wanted to get you something. So neither of us agreed on anything, if I recall.’

‘You want to get me something, then get me—I don’t know. Get me a fucking DVD or something.’

‘He Tian—’

‘No, get me a stockpile of condoms and eight-inch dildos. That would be better, wouldn’t it?’

‘He Tian—’

‘Or how about a fucking fighter jet. If you’re so fucking determined just to get me a _thing_ then—’

‘Will you shut up?’ said Guan Shan, twisting in chair. He Tian had his arms crossed. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He stared out the window. ‘And will you look at _me_ , please? Me. Sitting here in front of you. I’m not out on the fucking roof, He Tian.’

He Tian’s gaze slid back to his, a slow, reluctant movement. For all that He Tian was, sometimes it was like speaking to a child.

Guan Shan let out a breath, knuckles white on the back of the chair as he twisted to look at him.

‘I want to give you something because that’s what normal people do,’ he said, slow. ‘I want to give you something because that’s what people in a relationship do. Because sometimes it’s like—I don’t know. Actually, yeah. I _don’t know_ , sometimes.’

He Tian stared at him. ‘Are you asking me what we _are_?’

‘I’m saying that our relationship started when we were fifteen and we were not—not _kind_ and I want some kind of sign that we’re not _that_ anymore.’

‘We live together,’ He Tian said, flat. ‘And you were my first. What kind of _more_ do you want?’

Guan Shan shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He thought that maybe he did, but that He Tian never would. No matter how he said it—how he put the words together into a sentence.

He Tian was quiet. And Guan Shan didn’t know what else to say. And this is how it ended most of the time, really. Uncertain silences and looks that could mean anything and nothing. Sometimes it felt… untenable. And something always had to give.

And it happened, this time, to be He Tian.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Ten yuan. That’s it. That’s your limit. You’ve got to make it work.’

Guan Shan was nodding, a grin splitting across his face. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I will.’

And He Tian, because he could not seem to help it, was smiling too. It was an unwilling thing, a completely unwanted thing because Guan Shan knew that He Tian didn’t like himself when he seemed to be something that others had made him. But Guan Shan also knew that He Tian didn’t seem to mind when it was because of him.

‘You’re an idiot,’ he said, sighing, smiling, a breathy thing that made Guan Shan feel warm. Always warm.

* * *

Mo Guan Shan knew how to be thrifty. He knew how to cook a week’s worth of meals on a day’s wages. He knew that you had to go to the supermarket at 3pm to get the reduced groceries. He knew what newspapers had coupons for which stores. He knew ten ways of re-cooking rice.

Ten yuan should have been a breeze. Because it also meant that he didn’t have to even spend that. He was creative. Sometimes.

And yet.

He thought he was beginning to understand what He Tian said when he didn’t want anything, or need anything, because nothing Guan Shan thought about seemed appropriate.

He looked around the apartment, dark and echoing at night, lit up by city lights. He Tian never drew the curtains. The fridge hummed and cast a pooling artificial glow across Guan Shan’s face as he stuck his head in.

He grabbed a bunch of grapes and plucked them off the vine with his mouth, shutting the door and wandering around the apartment, bare feet padding softly as he moved. He stared out the windowed wall, wishing a part of him could see what He Tian saw, and wondering if he wanted to.

Guan Shan was in one of those moods: the restless kind where his eyes felt to wide and his blood was singing under his veins. It felt like he was mid-summer heat and the buzz of cicadas, and He Tian slept too soundly to wake to it.

He ran his hands across the bookshelves, glancing at the labels: _High School. Middle School. University: Year One. Child—_

Guan Shan stared. _Childhood_.

It was He Tian’s writing. Had he put it there and thought Guan Shan wouldn’t notice? Had he had a moment of startling sentimentality?

His fingers edged around the lid of the box, and then he pulled it out. It was light, and at first he thought it was empty, and then he felt the small, pocket-sized book in the corner of it. The box he left on the shelf, the book he carried over to the window with him, sinking down cross-legged onto the floor.

The book was small, filled with plastic pages. Photo pages. Guan Shan squinted at the photos, nameless people doing things that Guan Shan didn’t remember. A dark-haired, dark-eyed family. Tall. Sharp.

Guan Shan had never seen a photo of He Tian’s family before. The resemblance was almost unsettling. The height of his father; the sharp jaw of his brother. His mother had his eyes.

The next pages were the same: family photos where everyone had curved lips but no one seemed to _smile_.

Guan Shan saw teenage He Tian with his brother, softer around the face, but nothing too different. He saw his mother in her twenties, the photo edged with vignette, as she sipped a glass of wine in a garden somewhere. Guan Shan saw He Tian—no. Not He Tian. Was it his brother? His father in his younger days?

 _What gave you the edge?_ Guan Shan thought, flicking through. _How did a family get so hard?_

And then he came to the last one, and this one was different. It was the youngest Guan Shan had seen He Tian. He couldn’t have been more than ten. The photo was dark, a backdrop of conifer trees. His brother had a smile that was edged, a bandage on his neck. And then—a dog. A puppy. And He Tian’s mouth was hiding behind its fur but his eyes were sparked into a smile.

 _He looks…_ Guan Shan didn’t know. _Young?_ Young in a way that Guan Shan had never seen him; young in a way that meant his mind wasn’t split into the person he wanted to be and the person he thought he had to. Young in the way that his smile, the lift of his eyes, seemed unbidden and uncensored. Young in the way that came with a kind of happiness that Guan Shan had wanted and thought He Tian had never found in him.

Guan Shan blinked at the photo. His mind quiet.

‘Guan Shan?’

Guan Shan jumped. Slipped the photo into the pocket of his hoody.

He Tian was leaning in the doorway of their bedroom, hair mussed. His eyes were hooded with sleep. Dim light spilled out into the apartment.

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Is everything okay?’

Guan Shan felt his heartbeat slow. Felt it clench at the sound of He Tian’s voice, sleep-thick, concerned. He Tian seemed to reveal himself more in the moments he couldn’t help himself than in all those moments he planned so carefully. Guan Shan hoped that He Tian would lose himself a little more if it meant he got to see the truth of him more often.

‘Fine,’ he said. He got to his feet. The lid on the photobox was skewed, but He Tian was growing sharper as the seconds passed. Guan Shan followed He Tian into the bedroom, let the arm wrap tight around his waist, the hot breath on the back of his neck slowing, quieting.

Guan Shan stared into the darkness of the bedroom; stared out into the city lights that he saw, suddenly, new.

* * *

He Tian was distraught.

Guan Shan had hoped the look he would see on his face would be new in a way that would be phenomenal and euphoric and _beatific_.

This was new, but instead it ripped something out of Guan Shan and seemed to make him into something new that was raw and choking and made him feel that heat across his throat like he couldn’t breathe.

He found her in a shelter. A little thin, a whine like an alarm bell. Her fur was matted and she smelled and Guan Shan had to bathe her three times before she got better.

Technically, after the vaccinations and the donation to the shelter and the collar and the toys he bought from IKEA and the food and the bowls and the bed… _Technically_ , she’d cost him nothing.

He had to carry her up the stairs because her short legs were buckling as she climbed and he thought she was going to piss herself with excitement and that would kind of ruin things. He set her in the apartment, in the bed he’d bought her (ten minutes, then, spent trying to get her back in it and for her to sit down, tail thumping against the floor, tongue lolling, eyes bright), and then he tied a bow around her neck.

‘Nice,’ he said to her, and bopped her on the head. Her ears were soft. ‘Good work.’

She stared at him.

‘Yes. Well.’

The minutes passed. She seemed to like his shoelaces, and left them dangling soggy onto the floor. He had to slip a finger beneath her collar to keep her sitting there.

‘I feel like we need to make some ground rules,’ he said to her.

Predictably, she said nothing.

And then there were keys jingling at the door, and she was pulling away from him with a bounding energy, whining, and Guan Shan could feel his heart coming out of his throat.

He Tian shut the door behind him, and already she was biting at his ankles and leaving a blurred trail of golden fur in her wake, and there was silence but for the scrabble of her paws on the floor and the quiet gnawing sounds she made.

He Tian was too still. His eyes, slowly, lifted to Guan Shan’s.

‘What is this,’ he said.

Guan Shan laughed, an awkward thing. ‘Technically she cost nothing. So. Happy birthday.’

He Tian didn’t blink.

‘I thought—I found—You could say _thank you_.’

He Tian stared, longer, and then he stepped over the puppy. Her teeth were chewing at his trouser leg; she slid along the floor with the movement.

‘Careful—’

‘Take it back.’

Guan Shan frowned. ‘What?’

‘Take it back,’ He Tian said again. He settled his satchel on the kitchen counter, and grabbed a beer from the fridge like she wasn’t there. Like her eyes weren’t bright and round as pebbles. Like there wasn’t a red bow against her neck and like the apartment hadn’t suddenly shifted again to become hers too, the same way it had when Guan Shan had moved in, expanded like a rib cage to take a breath and let them all in.

‘You can’t just—You can’t just take them back,’ said Guan Shan. His voice was faint. ‘That’s not how it works.’

He Tian took a swig of beer. He was staring at Guan Shan over the bottle. A flat look. It held nothing in it, and Guan Shan felt it like a gunshot.

‘Why are you—I don’t understand,’ he said, and he didn’t.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. He Tian was supposed to fall into himself. He was supposed to be something that Guan Shan realised he was hoping to see for a long time and was now wondering if it even existed.

 _Maybe he’s too gone_ , a part of him thought quietly. _Maybe he’s become like the statues in the photos. Maybe he’s become his father._

They were going to go for walks and He Tian would get up in the night when she was whining and Guan Shan would teach her how to sit and He Tian would go running with her and he was going to _smile_. He was going to smile like a suggestion of the thing that he was in the photo.

It was supposed to have been beautiful.

And instead—instead he had this.

‘You said ten yuan—’

‘I didn’t say you could get me a fucking _animal_ , Guan Shan—’

‘Don’t be like that. I know you’re emotionally fucking stunted sometimes but don’t be like that.’

‘Like what? Rational? I don’t like pets, Guan Shan. I thought it was obvious by the fact of my _never saying I wanted one_.’

‘Then what about the photo,’ Guan Shan said, genuinely confused. How had this all gone so _wrong_?

‘What photo?’

‘The photo with you brother. In the forest. You were camping I think or—’

‘How _dare_ you,’ He Tian let out, bottle dropping hard onto the counter like it would have smashed with a little more pressure. ‘That was _personal_ —’

‘It was on the fucking _bookshelf_ ,’ Guan Shan choked out, eyes stinging they were so wide. ‘You know, in this fucking apartment that we _share_ — _together_. Or—or has this always been yours and I’ve just been some sort of interloper that you’ve been waiting to leave?’

‘That’s not what I—’

‘Not what you meant? That sounded like exactly what you meant.’

He Tian ran a hand through his hair. The puppy, now, had her head in a pair of Guan Shan’s trainers. He Tian still hadn’t really looked at her.

‘You should have asked me,’ he said. ‘You should have asked.’

‘No,’ Guan Shan said. ‘You shouldn’t have lost your fucking shit at me because I tried to make you _happy_.’

‘Don’t make this my fault.’

‘I’m not—’ Guan Shan couldn’t help the sound he made, a disgusted, exasperated thing. ‘I’m not making this anyone’s _fault_ , He Tian. You’re the one that does that.’

He Tian’s jaw was working. He was gripping the edge of the counter, leaning forward onto his hands.

 _Look at yourself_ , Guan Shan wanted to say, staring at the dark hair fallen across He Tian’s eyes, and his shadowed eyes. Staring at the taught shape of He Tian’s body straining against some part of himself. _Is it lonely being this sad? Is it sad being this lonely?_

‘I had a dog once,’ He Tian said. His voice had taken an edge onto itself, not angry anymore. _You should listen_ , it said. _I might be telling the truth for once._

‘The one in the photo.’

He Tian chewed on his lip. He glanced at the puppy, making circuits of the apartment, tail thumping. Guan Shan wondered what that look was supposed to mean.

‘We found her camping. My brother and I. We never found her owner and my dad said if I could look after her and be responsible then I could keep her.’

‘That seems fair.’

‘It seemed like I’d struck gold,’ said He Tian. ‘I was ten.’

Guan Shan felt himself wander into the kitchen. He sat on one of the bar stools, an elbow on the surface, chin cupped in his palm.

‘I looked after her for almost a year, and then my dad got rid of her.’

Guan Shan’s breath caught in his throat. ‘He didn’t…’

‘What? No. No, it was nothing… Nothing like _that_. We moved cities. Dad wouldn’t let her come with us. He wasn’t a fucking psychopath.’

Guan Shan shrugged. Sometimes He Tian made him sound like he was, and he wondered if He Tian realised it. ‘So you just left her behind?’

‘I mean, I found her a new owner. But… It felt like it. I’d trained her. I’d looked after her. I’d raised her, and he was making me give her up. And it wasn’t…’ He laughed, dry and mirthless. ‘It wasn’t _fair_. He wasn’t hers to give away.’

‘Why did he make you?’ Guan Shan said. He kept his voice soft.

‘Why do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, but he did, he just wanted to see if He Tian did, too. ‘That’s why I’m asking you.’

He Tian gave him a long look, and it said that, yes, he knew Guan Shan was testing him. He sighed. ‘I was attached. She was taking up too much time. And he’d said—he’d said I should be responsible for something but obviously I couldn’t be _too_ responsible, right? Because too much of anything is bad in my dad’s book. And to _care_ about something too much is even more…’

Guan Shan tried to hold his gaze, but He Tian dropped it first. Guan Shan didn’t think He Tian had ever told anyone that before.

‘It’s not wrong to care,’ Guan Shan told him. He wanted to lean into him—to touch him. He didn’t know if He Tian would want that.

‘I know.’

‘Do you?’ _I don’t think you do._

He Tian opened his mouth. Closed it. Thumbed the label on the beer bottle growing warm on the counter. ‘I care about you,’ he said. It was a whisper stuck in his throat.

Guan Shan didn’t want to have to say it, but he needed to: ‘And is that enough? One person. Nothing else.’ _Am I enough?_

‘You’re enough.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

He Tian stood up straight, and wrapped his arms around himself. ‘I don’t know how else to… You’re all I know. You’re all I’ve felt. The first thing—first _real thing_ by the time I was fifteen, and the only thing since.’ He swallowed and said, ‘You’re the only thing that’s real. That I feel—that I am so sure will stay.’

His words were listed. They were a question, and Guan Shan hurt to feel it. Did He Tian not _know_? How _long_ had this question mark been lurking in his head?

He Tian: indomitable, dark, wicked, unbearably complex. _Will you stay?_ he was saying. Where did that question fit in with the person Guan Shan knew— _had known_ since middle school?

Guan Shan slid from the chair, and in seconds He Tian was a warmth pressed against him, arms around Guan Shan’s shoulder blades. ‘I’m staying,’ Guan Shan murmured into He Tian’s neck, as He Tian wrapped his arms around Guan Shan’s waist. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Nothing else is either. And I’m not taking her back.’

There was a pause. ‘Okay,’ said He Tian.

Guan Shan drew back, and met his eyes. ‘Okay? Just like that.’

And He Tian broke away, and Guan Shan would have been saddened by the loss if he didn’t watch He Tian wander over to where the puppy had fallen asleep, chin on one of Guan Shan’s trainers, and pick her up until she was a bundle of golden fur asleep in He Tian’s arms, breathing quiet snuffles in her sleep, dark nose twitching.

Guan Shan stared at him. His heart felt strange. Was this a sight he was allowed to look upon? Was he supposed to be privy to the curl of a smile on He Tian’s smile that was new. That was different to the photo because _He Tian_ was different and Guan Shan could not expect him to be the same. It was different, but it was enough, and it was real, and it was more: Guan Shan had given it to him, and it was here now, and it belonged to a He Tian that Guan Shan got to be a part of.

He felt, distantly, euphoric.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153061538384/surprises
> 
> Please leave kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
